Back before I knew any better, and with a long track record of elaborate online pranks with lead up and “photo evidence”, I took advantage of access to a 12-week scan of an older friend’s baby and carefully cut together my own name with the letters available to “photoshop” (MSPaint) my own scan, posting that our “big news” alluded to the day before was a baby (it was actually the fact that we were moving across the country after graduation and the wedding).

I like to think that if I had known better I would have passed up the “opportunity”. Knowing me, I would have still thought of it, and challenged myself to the photoshop job for fun and shown it to my husband as “look what I can do”, but would have stopped myself from carrying out the prank.

Please pass along the word: fake announcements are very hurtful to those chasing the dream of making their own announcement, whether it’s because they’ve never had a positive test or because they’ve been pregnant and never made it to the point where they felt comfortable broadcasting it widely.

Since I usually draw people in with links from my social media, this post will probably only find the eyeballs of those who visit the website manually or subscribe via an RSS reader (and it’s my intention to take it down once I’m done with the work).

I’m going to do some WordPress plug-in testing for a volunteer gig and instead of setting up a sandbox WP I’m just going to add a bunch of junk here and then take it out again. I have no idea if the junky parts will also show up in RSS but if they do, here’s an explanation of what’s going on.

I’ve reached a point in my timeline where I completely stopped taking notes for this blog. I found an online support group which is actually palatable and all my writing has gone there.

It’s very different than writing for the blog. For one thing, it’s real-time. There’s an off-topic thread every day where we talk about everything from that day’s medication side effects to random plans for weekend. Often there’s a small fertility tie in (“I’m on vacation but this cream I’m on means I can’t go swimming”) but not always.

The biggest difference is the audience. We are all so honest and blunt with each other. There’s no such thing as “too much information” or coded language (except for hilarious nicknames like “dildocam” for the internal ultrasounds) and there’s no such thing as a “wrong” emotion to be feeling or even discuss with others. Some of the veterans will warn the newbs about things like early pregnancy test results, and how IVF is so much more diagnostic than it is a surefire solution that will guarantee you a baby. And there are so many anecdotes that are just too graphic for a larger appeal, while they keep us rolling in the aisles in sad-laughing solidarity.

I’ll be composing my entries here based on rereading my posts there. I do consider that account completely apart from the rest of my online presence and it shouldn’t be obviously linkable; I wouldn’t recommend following me there if you could figure it out since I’m in a safe place to be my bitter infertile alter ego, not my fertility awareness outreach blogger persona.

Hopefully I find the right way to translate my experiences from that audience to you, dropping enough of the graphic detail while having enough material to reconstruct our experiences from the time. However there’s a good chance the tone will change, at least slightly. You’ve been warned.

A bonus post about why after a year or two you can never really be cured of infertility, even if you eventually manage to have healthy babies.

The money

The money that could have been a family vacation (or three), allowed the house you buy to be just a bit less of a fixer upper, given you a little breathing room to job search a little longer, or hell, to help out others whose need is so much more than yours.

Even if you had the cash on hand, even if you saved up just for this, you can’t help knowing what it could have bought instead of false hope.

The time

Some people choose to be childfree while they’re young; we wanted to be empty nesters while we were still young. And it’s not as though we can enjoy this time together now the same as if we were choosing to and completely innocently thinking we could get pregnant as soon as we wanted to.

Time just keeps turning while we spin our wheels. We get older. Our friends’ kids get older. Our parents get older. That time can’t be got back again. My grandparents were all dead before I turned 20.

The innocence

Of happiness for seeing two lines on a home test, being excited for scans, not worrying if things are might be slightly out of the norm… and of accepting medicine as a practiced thing.

Twice I’ve had home pregnancy tests that didn’t pan out. Meanwhile I hear most walk-ins and family doctors just do a repeat urine test and then tell you when to come back for a doppler. No worrying, no waiting on bidaily blood tests hoping the levels double. If you have never had a loss, you just get happy at two lines and call an OB or midwife.

Not only will I not feel pregnant until the first ultrasound, I’ll never feel like I’m out of the woods. Ever.

And I’ve had one of those experiences that pulls back the curtain on medical “science”. It’s science alright — fiddle with things based on hypotheses and then make conclusions. A medical “practice” is the part I have real trouble with. They have what they think will work, but if it doesn’t, it’s possible for them to be completely stumped. You have to trust that there is no way for them to know, and not just that it’s too expensive for them to find out, or that no one has cared enough to do research to learn about it.

Being pregnant with your friends

Doing appropriate exercises together, co-baby showers, commiserating when you know the other person is in the same boat — all gone. Sure, you might get their stuff as hand-me-downs instead, but at the cost of…

Your friends’ kids and your kids being the same age

It starts bad enough. Your friends are at it before you can be. Maybe they were married later than you, too. But that’s ok, it’s not like you needed to have the oldest. Besides, aforementioned hand-me-downs!

But unless you’re right behind them, that age difference will really start to matter. What kid wants to hang out with kids 3 years younger than them? 5 years younger? 8?

And what about the kids conceived after you started trying? There’s the one who was conceived 5 months after we started. The one that has the exact birthday of the due date of our second chemical pregnancy, the one that really tricked me into thinking it was for real.

The further your kids drift from your friends’ kids in ages, the further you know you’ll end up being from their parents.

The idea that the universe even notices who you are, let alone rewards you for it

Bonus

All the perfect houses that went on and came off the market while you weren’t sure if you needed 4 bedrooms or not. We found the perfect fixer-upper we could have bought no problem in the summer of 2015 but hesitated and missed our shot.

Waiting for post-IVF follow up

In between our cancelled FET and our follow up 6 weeks later we were on the road three times and went to our local ComicCon. To say we kept busy is an understatement.

The first and third outings were road trips back to where we went to university, but the middle trip was 4 days in New York to see a taping of The Daily Show (and for my hubby to see the city for the first time).

Not for the first time, I was ovulating while on vacation. What a fun story that would make! We know where you were conceived! And it’s easier to be on demand while on vacation anyway!

But it turns out that no, vacations are not a magic infertility cure-all, no matter what you might have heard or repeated to others. (The biggest version of this letdown was in our 10th month of trying when we were on vacation in O week right after I had quit my job in a desperate, misguided attempt to “relax”.)

At ComicCon, I let infertility take over my body as a mouthpiece like I always do. I chatted to Jason Mewes to say I was glad he didn’t have any fertility problems after long term drug use now that he’s sober and he and his wife were ready to try. But mostly I told him it was great to see him use his power of vulgarity for awesome (he straight up was like “sperm count” and “waiting for her period so she could go on the pill” which isn’t actually vulgar but not usually topics at scifi convention panels, and nice to see dealt with no-nonsensely). I asked Sean Maher if he and his husband had used a surrogate or if they had adopted after he used an expression like “we got pregnant immediately” in his panel (they adopted and he implied it happened with a snap of fingers… It’s useless to compare adoption across provincial lines, let alone me to a gay celebrity). Both conversations were at the autograph tables, not in the Q&A, but I didn’t want to go up to anyone without something to talk about and it turns out that’s my touchstone.

Too bad I didn’t have anything to ask Jon Stewart or Larry Wilmore re: infertility during their pre-taping Q&As.

My period trolled me by being a day or two late, and me with free pregnancy tests in the mail but not arrived yet (included with the cheap ovulation tests I had ordered). But of course, the non-cure cured nothing, and it was another 12 days until our follow up. Two more cycles gone. We had tried to move up our follow up but there were no appointments significantly earlier enough to save us the extra wasted cycle.

The second frozen embryo transfer had the upside of familiarity going for it. We already knew the protocol and were familiar with all the medication and schedule. This was only the second time ever in our treatments that we were repeating the same thing as the previous cycle, and knew exactly what to expect. (more…)